Year:2012/2013
Partner: Australian Government – AusAID
Summary: Human rights are violated on a daily basis in Palestine. Many violations go unreported because the victims do not have skills to get their voices heard or because media professionals do not know how to properly report on issues related to Human Rights abuses. This project will strengthen the skills of local media professionals and thereby the quality of reporting on Human Rights violations. The main goals of this project are to promote positive change in policies or actions of government or relevant non-state actors in the area of human rights and to monitor and report on human rights violations, including supporting victims of human rights abuses.

Short description of the Project:

1. Project’s background:

The idea of the project Social Media for Human Rights ‘We have the right to say’ stemmed from the daily Israeli violations against the Palestinian people. Undertaken by Media Development Center (MDC) of Birzeit University in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and financed by the Australian Development Agency, the project aims to empower journalists and marginalized groups (women living in refugees camps and communities near borders, checkpoints, B and C areas) and raise theoretical awareness on human rights and on how to report violations using social media.

The project enabled local journalists, whom were professionally trained, to train around 515 of the most underprivileged and vulnerable women on how to express violations against their communities and the vicinity, using social media. Trainers where hand-picked to deliver the training in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This training is part of the project’s endeavor to improve quality of media productions on human rights issues, whether at the media institutions or amongst journalists themselves. It also aims to increase quality and quantity of media productions in terms of documentation and analysis by employing qualified Palestinian journalists in tackling human rights issues. Moreover, the project provides more information about the subject through Facebook pages and blogs that will be administrated by the journalist trainers and female mentors. All of which aims at educating victims of human rights violations in Palestine, Palestinian and international media, CSOs and media/legal centers.

The project mechanism consists of two basic phases:

Phase I - training of journalists: 27 journalists from WB&GS have been trained on theories of human rights and international law for journalistic purposes, and on how to file human rights reports and, later, qualify them as trainers for citizen journalism.

Phase II - training of women: after being selected, journalist trainers from phase I trained targeted women. 15 training courses are to be held in the West Bank, and the same for Gaza Strip.

2. Objectives:

Raise awareness on human rights, and observe, document and publish violations through social networks.

12 participants from WB northern, central and southern provinces joined the project’s phase I (3 training courses). They included journalists new to media; some of them are post graduate students in the field of human rights.

Participating journalists from Gaza Strip:

15 participants joined the first three training courses as part of phase I. They have been picked up according to geographical division in order to publicize benefit to all northern, central and southern provinces upon holding field courses. Participants include experienced journalists fresh graduates and youth activists.

4. Phase II in details – WB&GS:

Qualified male/female journalists have trained 515 marginalized women by conducting 30 courses from January to May 2013, 3 days per course in 30 locations. In every course, the trainer had trained the women on comprehending human rights, how to express opinion, report, document and publish violations against their communities using social networks. Trained women started their own Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts, where they uploaded human rights-related material and reports documenting violations of the Israeli occupation, in addition to other social violations.

213 female beneficiaries from WB in phase II stayed throughout all training phases.

302 female beneficiaries from GS in phase II attended the field training courses.

5. The Project's Productions:

Facebook pages and blogs created by participants from different regions. and posted different kinds of materials and documents tacking rights topics, and different kinds of violations. Furthermore, the participants discussed many crucial subjects in these pages and blogs such as unemployment; violating rights of women in the marginalized areas and the difficult situations they face, and the problem of blackouts particularly in the Gaza strip.